Open Knowledge Archive: Proposal for Merit-Based Interdisciplinary Preprint Server Description This proposal outlines a novel approach to open scientific publishing that addresses three critical failures in the current academic system: institutional gatekeeping, disciplinary fragmentation, and binary validation models. Key Innovation: A concentric ring architecture where papers enter freely at the outer rim (zero gatekeeping) and move inward based on accumulated validation. The center represents maximum interdisciplinary verification—where fields converge rather than separate. The Problem: Traditional journals reject AI-assisted research based on writing style, not content quality Independent researchers face systematic barriers (institutional email requirements, credential-based filtering) Interdisciplinary work falls between disciplinary silos Binary accept/reject model provides no pathway for progressive validation The Solution: Ring-based validation (outer rim = unverified, inner rings = progressively validated) Domain slices (papers positioned by subject area, can span multiple fields) Merit determines position, not credentials or authorship method Completely open access (readers never pay) Implementation: Phase 1: $8,000 proof of concept using AI-assisted development (Claude Code)Sustainable through hybrid revenue model (minimal per-paper fees, institutional partnerships, donations) All code released under AGPL-3.0 (prevents proprietary forks) Structured as irrevocable non-profit (cannot be commercialized) This proposal is released under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 to prevent commercial exploitation while enabling open collaboration. It represents infrastructure for the commons—research validation that serves knowledge, not profit. Includes: 1. Full architectural specification (ring/slice topology, validation pipeline) 2. Technical implementation plan (backend, frontend, moderation system) 3. Governance model (non-profit structure, anti-gaming provisions) 4. Financial sustainability model (revenue sources, cost projections) 5. Phase 1 budget ($8,000 for AI-assisted development) Status: Proposal stage. Seeking collaborators, volunteers, and initial funding.
This study analyzes 128,286 academic papers tagged as blockchain or cryptocurrency research by OpenAlex's machine-learning concept classifier, published between 2013 and mid-2026. A broader keyword search across paper abstracts identifies 1,938,409 publications that mention Web3-related terms. The analysis measures keyword frequency, temporal trajectories, growth rates, citation distributions, geographic concentration, institutional output, and open access rates. Key findings include 117x growth in annual blockchain publications between 2013 and 2025, the rise of zero-knowledge proofs as the fastest-growing cryptographic primitive (2.1x growth, 2025-2026 vs. 2022-2023), DeFi research experiencing a 74x increase from 2019 to 2025, NFT research peaking in 2023 before declining, China and India leading global output with 13.5% and 13.3% of all papers respectively, and 43.5% of all papers receiving zero citations.
This study conducts a scientometric analysis of global financial risk management research to map its intellectual structure, thematic trends, and collaboration networks over the period 2000–2025. Data were retrieved from the Scopus database using a comprehensive search strategy and analyzed with VOSviewer to visualize co-authorship patterns, country collaborations, keyword co-occurrences, thematic clusters, and temporal developments. The results indicate that risk management, risk assessment, and financial markets remain the most influential and frequently studied topics, while emerging themes such as sustainability, decentralized finance, cryptocurrency, and supply chain resilience reflect the field’s adaptation to evolving technological, economic, and environmental challenges. Collaboration analysis highlights the dominance of countries such as China, the United Kingdom, and India, alongside increasing participation from emerging economies. The study offers practical implications for policymakers and financial practitioners to align strategies with current research priorities, and theoretical contributions by identifying conceptual linkages and emerging research fronts. Limitations include reliance on a single database and the inherent biases of citation-based analysis.
Francisco J. DÃaz, Carolina Menchaca, Lukas Weidener
Introduction The scientific community is increasingly interested in leveraging decentralized technologies to address systemic challenges such as the reputation economy, the monopolization of academic publishing, and the replication crisis. This study presents an analysis of the Decentralized Science (DeSci) landscape in 2023, focusing on organizational structures, technological foundations, and funding mechanisms of DeSci organizations. Methods A 16-question survey was distributed to DeSci organizations between December 2023 and April 2024, and responses from 49 projects were analyzed using quantitative and qualitative methods. Results Results highlight the prominent role of Ethereum as the dominant blockchain platform in DeSci, the varied applications of blockchain in scientific processes, and a significant emphasis on community building and infrastructure development. Funding sources within the ecosystem are moving towards partnerships with more traditional organizations, including academia. However, most projects lack DAO features for governance. It remains uncertain whether they will adopt more DAO-like structures in the future or deploy a different organizational model. Discussion Our findings offer a comprehensive overview of the progress and challenges facing the DeSci ecosystem, including slow project progression due to leadership issues and limited funding for most DeSci projects. By identifying key patterns and areas for improvement, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the factors driving success and sustainability in DeSci.
In recent years, propelled by societal transformations and technological advancements, emerging technologies founded upon diverse disciplines such as financial and information technology have rapidly evolved. Identifying the trends associated with these emerging technologies and extracting their salient topics is crucial in order to accurately grasp the developmental trajectory of these tools and for their efficient utilization. In this study, we chronologically categorize information derived from five types of multi-source data, including journal articles, patent inventions, and industry reports, into distinct periods. We employ the LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) topic model to identify emerging technological themes within these periods and utilize a dual-index theme lifecycle analysis method to construct a hotspot theme distribution map, thereby facilitating the extraction of significant themes. Through empirical research on blockchain financial technology, we ultimately identify 22 thematic areas of blockchain finance and extracted eight prominent themes, including financial technology, cross-border payments, digital invoices, supply chain finance, and decentralization. By analyzing these themes alongside their respective popularity levels, we validate that the methods above can be used to effectively identify emerging technological hotspots and illuminate their developmental directions.
This article discusses the issues with traditional scientific publishing and the solutions offered by DeSci. It covers problems caused by oligopoly in scientific publishing, author-reviewer-editor triangulation, predatory journals, and funding and resource allocation. These issues result in gated publishing, peer review bias, publish or perish culture, centralized funding, poor publication quality, low accessibility, low transparency, and low reproducibility. This study discusses DeSci's solutions to the aforementioned problems through blockchain technologies, including DAO, DBDAO, NFT, Zero-Knowledge Proofs, IP-NFT, and IPFS. Sample applications and projects are provided to illustrate these solutions. DeSci's solutions represent a transition from oligopoly in scientific production to the true Open Science era.
Background: Rapid advancements in Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), including blockchain, are foundational to a new era of digital innovation. This innovation has catalyzed the emergence of ‘Decentralized Science (DeSci),’ a new concept and movement that aims to address the challenges of modern science. Objective: Given the novelty of the field of DeSci, this study aims to provide a comprehensive definition of the term as well as explore and conceptualize shared values and guiding principles inherent to DeSci. Methods: In line with the objectives of this study, an exploratory literature review was conducted to identify and synthesize the scholarly and secondary literature. The search and selection process included six databases (PubMed, Google Scholar, Web of Science, IEEE Xplore, arXiv, and Social Science Research Network), and the search period was limited to the last 15 years, from 2008 to 2023. To identify relevant secondary literature, such as articles, reports, blog posts, and website content, a keyword search was conducted in three search engines (Google.com, Bing.com, and Yahoo.com). Owing to the novelty of the concept and movement of DeSci, the exploratory literature review was supplemented by an anonymous online-based expert survey using a combination of single-choice and open-ended questions. The experts were selected based on predefined inclusion criteria, in association with their activities in the field of DeSci. The responses to the single-choice questions were subject to statistical analysis, whereas the open-ended questions were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results: Seven studies were selected for evaluation as part of the search and selection process to identify relevant scholarly literature. Following the review of secondary literature, additional 24 publications were included in the analysis. In the expert survey, 39 valid datasets were collected and analyzed. Following the synthesis of the results of the exploratory literature review and expert survey, a comprehensive definition of the term ‘Decentralized Science’ (DeSci) was formulated to reflect recurring themes. As no publications that explicitly discussed or addressed the values or principles of DeSci in the exploratory literature review could be identified, a set of shared values and guiding principles for DeSci were defined based on the results of the expert survey. Conclusion: The results of this study underscore the emerging nature of DeSci, as evidenced by the limited availability of relevant information and scarcity of academic publications. While this study proposes a comprehensive definition of DeSci as well as a set of shared values and guiding principles, the results of this study highlight the importance of ongoing evaluation and validation. Furthermore, the results of this study indicate a clear need for future research in the field of DeSci, emphasizing its dynamic and developing nature.
Arthur Carvalho, Chad Anderson, Liudmila Zavolokina
Information systems (IS) conferences, as venues for the introduction of new knowledge to the IS community, require effective peer review systems to evaluate submitted research for quality, validity, and originality. We argue in this paper that questionable practices and degrading review quality may arise without direct incentives beyond reviewer altruism to engage in the peer review process. In particular, we highlight potential issues with arguably common practices in some IS conferences, such as peer review invitations sent to researchers who have also submitted papers for publication consideration and the increasing number of reviews performed by graduate students. To address these issues, we suggest three solutions: 1) quid pro quo rules; 2) the use of incentive-compatible methods whose scores are linked to relevant rewards; and 3) the use of blockchain-based tokens in tandem with smart contracts and zero-knowledge proofs. We conclude by offering directions the IS community can take to further study the highlighted issues and implement the proposed solutions.
The ROSA Journal focuses on three primary areas: (1) the examination of blockchain and Web3 research within societal contexts; (2) the application of quantitative methodologies in the fields of the humanities and social sciences; and (3) the provision of research-driven reviews of current social, political, and economic issues. We support the promotion of interdisciplinary collaboration between individuals from the natural sciences and the social sciences in order to produce a body of scientific knowledge that exceeds the capacity of a conventional academic journal.
In the case of a hard fork, the new rules contradict the old ones so much that the nodes that did not accept them do not perceive information from the nodes that accepted them. If we follow the same analogy with languages, the old nodes speak English, and the new ones speak Chinese. The hard fork, according to the cryptocurrency academy , involves changing the consensus mechanism itself, and in this case the entire network is divided into two parts that will never be able to interact again. This is because blocks that are recognized as valid in one part will not be considered valid in the other.<br> In the case of a hard fork, one of the formed branches (chains) of the system may die off, but it may also persist - it depends on how much hash power each of the branches has. A branch with a higher power has a better chance of success.
In this paper, we propose a novel framework for a scholarly journal, a token-curated registry (TCR). This model originates in the field of blockchain and cryptoeconomics and is essentially a decentralized system where tokens (digital currency) are used to incentivize quality curation of information. TCR is an automated way to create lists of any kind where decisions (whether to include N or not) are made through voting that brings benefit or loss to voters. In an academic journal, TCR could act as a tool to introduce community-driven decisions on papers to be published, thus encouraging more active participation of authors and reviewers in editorial policy and elaborating the idea of a journal as a club. TCR could also provide a novel solution to the problems of editorial bias and the lack of rewards/incentives for reviewers. In the paper, we discuss core principles of TCR, its technological and cultural foundations, and finally analyze the risks and challenges it could bring to scholarly publishing.
Current citation indexes such as Scopus and the Web of Science rely on centralized curation to function. This creates a series of potentially negative incentives, both financial and academic, which could be addressed through the creation of an unpermissioned, distributed ledger of citations. This paper explores this possibility using Bitcoin as a model.
Scientific funding within the academy is an often complicated affair involving disparate and competing interests. Private universities, for instance, are vastly outpacing public institutions in garnering large, prestigious, science-related grants and external research investment. Inequities also extend to the types of research funded, with government, corporate, and even military interests privileging certain types of inquiry. This article proposes an innovative type of science research fund using cryptocurrencies, a fast-growing asset class. Although not a total funding solution, staking coins, specifically, can be strategically invested in to yield compound interest. These coins use masternode technologies to collateralize the network and speed transaction pace and may pay dividends to masternode holders, allowing institutions that purchase these types of central hubs to potentially engage in a lucrative form of dividend reinvestment. Using cryptocurrencies as a new funding stream may garner large amounts of capital and creation of nonprofit institutes to support the future of funding scientific research within educational institutions.
Environmental Health has just received its first Impact Factor by Thomson ISI. At a level of 2.48, this achievement is quite satisfactory and places Environmental Health in the top 25% of environmental science journals. When the journal was launched in 2002, it was still unclear whether the Open Access publishing model could be made into a viable commercial enterprise within the biomedical field. During the past eight years, Open Access journals have become widely available, although still covering only about 15% of journal titles. Major funding agencies and institutions, including prominent US universities, now require that researchers publish in Open Access journals. Because of the profound role of scientific journals for the sharing of results and communication between researchers, the advent of Open Access may be of as much significance as the transition from handwriting to printing via moveable type. As Environmental Health is an electronic Open Access journal, the numbers of downloads at the journal website can be retrieved. The top-20 list of articles most frequently accessed shows that all of them have been downloaded over 10,000 times. Back in 2002, the first article published was accessed only 49 times during the following month. A year later, the server had over 1,000 downloads per month, and now the total number of monthly downloads approaches 50,000. These statistics complement the Impact Factor and confirm the viability of Open Access in our field of research. The advent of digital media and its decentralized mode of distribution - the internet - have dramatically changed the control and financing of scientific information dissemination, while facilitating peer review, accelerating editorial handling, and supporting much needed transparency. Both the meaning and means of "having an impact" are therefore changing, as will the degree and way in which scientific journals remain "factors" in that impact.